Milestones for A400M
Three and a half years after the handover of its 50th A400M, Airbus has reached 100 deliveries with MSN111, the tenth A400M for the Spanish air force. The ferry flight from Seville to Zaragoza, where the Spanish A400M fleet is based, was performed on 24 May. In the same week, the fleet across all eight customer nations – Belgium, France, Germany, Luxembourg, Malaysia, Spain, Turkey and the UK – also achieved the landmark of 100,000 flight hours completed.
All A400M operators can deploy their aircraft on Covid-19 civil emergency response missions. Airbus also completed tests to expand its air-drop capabilities, including multiple platforms with parachute extraction (23 t). Another way of delivering cargo to bare airstrips without handling equipment was also certified: the combat offloading of 19 t of pallets (one pass) or 25 t (two passes) on paved or unpaved airstrips. (ah)